Miscellany

The title for my research proposal would be along the lines of "self-assembled protein semiconductor contacts".
The main idea would be to use the pilins from geobacter to connect semiconductor surfaces to each other.
This would require, first of all, a peptide with affinity for the material you wanted to bind to (eg. GaAs). This peptide would be identified through M13 phage display and subsequent purification and sequencing of the peptide.
Secondly an assembled pilin incorporating the new peptide would be fabricated. This could either be done through domain recombination of pili and the peptide, in separate cells, then purifying and let it selfassemble, hopefully, with regular pilis. Selection of successfull wires would be through placing the semiconductor materials in a distance that of the size of the pilins and then washing thourougly.
An alternate method would be devising an affinity test for pilins and using phage display to devise an antibody for it. then combine the peptides and try to make them self assemble with regular pilins.
Succesfull assembly of contacts would make measurement of various electric properties possible.